Don't Quote Me Trivia Quiz

Answer: Lana Turner

Lana Turner, born in 1921 in Idaho USA, was one of Hollywood's most popular and glamorous stars of the 50s and 60s. She began her movie career aged sixteen. She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in "Peyton Place" (1957). Turner was married eight times (twice to the same man), her first husband being bandleader Artie Shaw who she married in 1940 when she was 19 years old. That marriage only lasted three months.

She hit the headlines in 1958 when her daughter, Cheryl Crane, stabbed her mother's lover, Johnny Stompanato, to death. At a Coroner's inquest, it was found that Crane acted in self-defence. In 1992 Turner was diagnosed with throat cancer. She died in 1995 aged 74.

Answer: Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born 14 March 1879 in the city of Ulm in the then Kingdom of Wurttemberg in the German Empire. He is particularly well known for his formula E=mc2 which has been called "the world's most famous equation". In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He developed the theory of relativity.

He was a professor at the Berlin Academy of Science and was visiting the USA in 1933 when Hitler came to power, so he did not go back to Germany but settled in the USA and became an American citizen in 1940. He helped in bringing about the "Manhattan Project" that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II. He died in 1955 aged 76. Today the word "Einstein" is synonymous with "genius".

Answer: Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th US President, was born in Illinois on 6 February 1911. He became a radio broadcaster and moved to Los Angeles where he had success as a Hollywood movie and TV star in the 40s and 50s. He began his political career as a Democrat, but then became a Republican.

In 1966 he won the election for Governor of California and then again in 1970. In 1980 he was elected President of the USA and left office in 1989. In 1994 he revealed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

He died in 2004, aged 93.

Answer: George Carlin

George Denis Patrick Carlin was born in 1937 in Manhattan, New York. He was well-known for his thoughts on many topics including the English language, religion and politics. He won five Grammy Awards. Carlin was in second place on the 2004 Comedy Central list of the 100 greatest stand up comedians, with Richard Prior coming first and Lenny Bruce third.

He often appeared on the "Johnny Carson Show" and he was the first host of "Saturday Night Live" and often performed in Las Vegas. George Carlin died in June 2008 of heart failure.

He was 71 years old. He posthumously received the "Mark Twain Prize for American Humour" in 2008.

Answer: Robin Williams

Robin McLaurin Williams was born in 1951 in Chicago, Illinois. He became well-known through his role as the alien Mork in the TV series "Mork & Mindy". He has appeared in such films as "Popeye" (1980), "Hook" (1991), "Mrs Doubtfire" (1993), "Good Morning Vietam" (1987), and "The Dead Poets Society (1989), to name but a few.

Williams has been nominated several times for an Academy Award and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in "Good Will Hunting" (1997). He has also won Emmy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards and at least five Grammy Awards. He assists with a lot of charities, including donating all proceeds from one of his concerts to help rebuild the New Zealand city of Christchurch after the devastating earthquake that hit there in 2010.

Answer: Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead was born in 1901 in Philadelphia. She was a cultural anthropologist who became well known to the general public from the 60s through her articles, books and speeches. She studied with both Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas. She held many posts during her career including curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she was an adjunct professor at the New School and Columbia University, and she founded the Fordham University's anthropology department. She usually carried a walking stick and wore a cape.

Mead spent some time in Samoa and other Pacific Ocean islands, which resulted in her book "Coming of Age in Samoa" (1928). She died of pancreatic cancer in November 1978. Mead was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Answer: Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut in May 1907. She appeared on stage, on TV and in film, where she was one of Hollywood's leading ladies for over 50 years. In 1999 she was named as "the greatest female star in Hollywood history" by the American Film Institute.

She won her first Best Actress Academy Award for her third film "Morning Glory (1933), and she won three further Best Actress Academy Awards: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1968); "The Lion in Winter" (1969); and "On Golden Pond" (1982). Altogether she was nominated 12 times. Her career spanned over 65 years and she appeared in 33 plays, 8 TV movies and 44 feature films. She died in June 2003, aged 96.

Answer: Henry Kissinger

Heinz Alfred Kissinger (Henry Alfred Kissinger) was born in Germany in 1923. His family fled to London because of Nazi persecution, before arriving in New York. After attending the George Washington High School, he enrolled in the City College of New York and studied accounting. He was drafted into the US Army in 1943, and became a US citizen that year. Because of his fluency in German he was assigned to the military intelligence section of the 84th Infantry Division and participated in the Battle of the Bulge.

After the end of World War II, he attended Harvard University, where he remained as a member of the faculty in the Department of Government. He held many important posts after that and he then became an advisor to Nelson Rockefeller, who at that time was Governor of New York. Kissinger was made President Nixon's Security Advisor following Nixon winning the Presidency, and also serving as National Security Advisor. He continued on as Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford. In 1973 he was a joint recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and as well receiving many other awards.

Answer: George Burns

Nathan Bimbaum (George Burns) was born in New York City in January 1896. He was an actor writer and comedian. His career spanned three quarters of a century, beginning in vaudeville, then to radio, television and film. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the film "The Sunshine Boys" (1975). He and his second wife, Gracie Allen, married in 1926 and had major success with their comedy partnership on radio, film and television.

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" aired on CBS TV from 1950 to 1958, when Gracie retired due to ill health. She died of a heart attack in 1964. She was 69 years old. George carried on and created a TV show "Wendy and Me", a sitcom starring himself and Connie Stevens, but it was cancelled after one year. However he kept on working in TV and making movies well into his 90s, also writing books. He starred in such movies as "18 Again" (1986), "Oh, God" (1977) (with two sequels, one in 1980 and the other in 1984), to name but a few. He died on 9 March 1996, suffering a heart attack. He had turned 100 years old only 39 days beforehand.

Answer: Spike Milligan

Terrence Alan Milligan (Spike Milligan), KBE, was born in Ahmednagar, British India, in 1918. His Irish father was serving in the British Indian Army, and his mother was English. However he lived most of his adult life in the UK and served with the British Army in the Royal Artillery during World War II.

Milligan was multi-talented, being a writer, musician, comedian, playwright, poet, cartoonist and actor. He helped create "The Goon Show" and both wrote and participated, some of his roles being Eccles and Minnie Bannister. He wrote many books and poems an wrote for and appeared on television. In 1998 in a national poll in the UK, his poem "On the Ning Nang Nong" was voted as the UK's favourite comic poem. He died in February 2002 from kidney failure. He was 83 years old.

Here is "On the Ning Nang Non":

"On the Ning Nang Nong 

Where the Cows go Bong! 

and the monkeys all say BOO! 

There's a Nong Nang Ning 

Where the trees go Ping! 

And the tea pots jibber jabber joo. 

On the Nong Ning Nang 

All the mice go Clang 

And you just can't catch 'em when they do! 

So its Ning Nang Nong 

Cows go Bong! 

Nong Nang Ning 

Trees go ping 

Nong Ning Nang 

The mice go Clang 

What a noisy place to belong 

is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!"

The three alternate answers were the other three members of "The Goons".